


Hide and Seek

by trustingHim17



Category: Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Humor, Panic Attacks, Phobias
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-21
Updated: 2020-10-21
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:55:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27128872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trustingHim17/pseuds/trustingHim17
Summary: “You handled that better than the last time.” “I unexpectedly found the last one in the middle of the floor.”Indirect sequel to Courage. Indirect prequel to JWP #18: Tactics
Kudos: 18





	Hide and Seek

“It is a miracle he puts up with you.”

The comment came after nearly thirty minutes of silence, and Holmes quirked a grin. “He did not have a choice on that matter.”

Something close to a snort answered him. “He had a choice,” I replied, layers of memory lurking under that phrase, “and he chose to accept you rather than put you in Bedlam.”

“You do not believe I belong in Bedlam.”

I made no reply, and he looked at me where I sat in the seat next to him. We were just returning from a couple of days in London, and I referred to Holmes’ mission to drive his brother out of his routine as much as possible—a mission which had culminated with as close to a prank war as Mycroft would ever come.

I had been trying to make him think I did not agree, but I could not kill the wide smirk that stretched across my face as I noticed his gaze.

“If you belong in Bedlam, I probably do, too,” I admitted, taking one hand off the wheel to reach into my pocket.

“What do you—” the question faltered, surprise washing over him as I showed him what was in my pocket. “How did you get that?!”

I held Holmes’ pocket watch—the same pocket watch Mycroft had swiped in retaliation and that Holmes had been unable to retrieve before we left.

The smirk turned into a true laugh, and I deposited the pocket watch in Holmes’ hand. “You could not find it in his room because he hid it in the vase in the sitting room.”

Holmes looked between me and the watch in his hand, surprised into silence, and I laughed again. “You might consider not harassing your brother-the-British-government quite as much,” I suggested. “You are lucky he did not lock you in jail overnight.”

Holmes rolled his eyes. “He would not do that.”

“Only a few hours, then?”

He brushed the comment aside, checking the watch for damage from its time in the vase. “He would not lock me in jail at all.”

“You hope.”

He glanced up, scowling at me, but I made no effort to kill my smirk. I would never lose interest in goading him, and he knew it. The one time I had stopped, thinking he would enjoy the break, he had nearly driven me mad watching my every move to find out what was wrong. He had visibly relaxed when I finally returned to bickering with him, and I decided that it was better to drive him crazy with my own brand of humor than to worry him to death without it.

He huffed, feigning irritation as we came to a stop in front of the cottage. “I am surprised he let you leave with it. You remember the last time I tried to take something.”

A chuckle escaped. I did indeed. Mycroft had sent me a message that Holmes would be late returning home, and another message had arrived the next morning from Holmes, informing me that he had just made port in Belgium. When he returned a couple of days later, he had answered my question with the information that he had woken up on the boat after he tried to borrow something of Mycroft’s without Mycroft knowing.

“He was banishing you from his room at the time,” I pointed out, “and we left immediately after. He may not have noticed until we left.”

Holmes huffed a disagreement. “He noticed.”

I smirked, preferring that option over having swiped it without his knowledge. I did not view it as stealing any more than I would have viewed taking back something that Harry had taken as stealing, but Mycroft _letting_ me leave showed that he thought about it the same way.

“So does this mean Mycroft likes me better?” I asked, unlocking the door.

He rolled his eyes at me again. “Hardly.”

I started to voice a dispute that he would never have let _Holmes_ leave the flat with anything not expressly given, but the words faltered, dying in my throat as I opened the door.

A long, rope-like object lay in the middle of the sitting room floor. The color of a tree branch, I would have convinced myself it was a stick if it did not meander back and forth between one end and the other, and I froze, staring at it.

“Watson?” I heard to my right. Holmes had looked up from inspecting the watch’s hinge when I made no reply, and his question of why I had stopped barely a step inside the door rang through the name.

Silence answered him. I had been trying to convince myself that one of us had left something lying there in our haste to get out the door, but the snake in the middle of the floor raised its head as he spoke. I tensed as fear, panic, shot through me.

“What is it, Watson?” Faint concern carried in the words, and he started to move around me. I knew the snake was harmless just as I knew he only wanted to find out what was wrong—and determining that would be easier looking at my face than my back—but a warning sounded in my mind.

_Danger!_

I forced myself to move, purposely filling the doorway and staying between him and the tentacle slithering its way across the floor, and I did not have to look at him to know that he was frowning at me.

The serpent stopped moving, flicking its tongue as it inspected the room, and I tried to force myself to do something, _anything_ , about the three-foot-long smooth snake exploring our sitting room. _Why_ had I listened when he insisted I leave my revolver behind this trip?

Because it had been a simple two-day trip for us to set some paperwork in order and see a few friends in the process. I knew that, but that knowledge did nothing for the frustration getting buried under my panic.

He tried to go around me again, and again I stopped him.

“Let me through, Watson! Why are you trembling?”

I _was_ trembling, I noticed, though that was hardly a surprise. I _hated_ snakes—I always had—and I wished I had my revolver. While I knew he preferred to move them back to the woods around the cottage, it no longer surprised Holmes when I shot a snake I happened to find first, and I would dearly have loved to shoot the revolting tentacle slithering through the middle of our floor. I firmly held that any serpent that intruded on our home deserved to die.

Holmes tried to move around me again, and this time I did not react quickly enough to prevent him. He came around in front of me, quickly following my gaze to the snake in the middle of the floor. A word he had probably learned at the docks some thirty years ago escaped, and he tried to block my view.

I refused to let him, the battle instincts coursing through me demanding that the potential danger remain in sight, and he swore again.

“Watson, inhale!”

Inhale? Why was he ordering me to inhale?

The room performed a sickening rotation around me and that disgusting serpent, and I realized I was hyperventilating—badly. My breaths were much too shallow, and I would soon pass out from lack of oxygen if I did not get my breathing under control.

There was still a snake in the middle of the sitting room, however, and getting that _thing_ away from me took precedence over even breathing. I felt along the wall behind me, searching for something I could use to kill it.

He saw what I was doing in an instant, and he realized _why_ I was doing it a moment later. He tore his attention from me and grabbed the fireplace poker, walking quickly toward the snake.

The voice in me screaming _Danger_ recognized what he was about to do, but before I could move—much less try to stop him—he had pinned the snake by the head. With me still blocking the door, he took it through his room, and the sound of the window opening, then closing, carried into the sitting room.

The battle reflex that had been keeping me upright left with the snake, and I relaxed, sinking down the wall to sit next to the valise I had apparently dropped. The room spun again, and I managed to get a shaky breath as I put my head in my hands. My reaction had left me trembling violently, as usual, and I could measure my racing pulse by the pounding in my chest. My breathing was the only thing I could consciously fix, however, and I focused on that, trying to force myself to take slow, deep breaths instead of the gasps I was getting.

“Watson!”

Intense worry lingered in his voice at seeing me on the floor, and I waved at him, telling him I was fine while hiding my face in my other hand. He knew my opinion on snakes and had for years, but that did not change the embarrassment I felt that a harmless animal could send me into an irrational panic. The handful of snake-related cases over the years had done nothing to help the fear that had rooted in childhood.

“Watson, look at me.”

I felt him kneel next to me and waved again, keeping my head between my knees as I fought to stay awake. The tingling in my hands and feet told me I was succeeding to some degree in calming down, and I focused on slowing my breathing to match Holmes’.

Several long minutes passed before I no longer gasped like a dying fish, and I took one deep breath, then two, before finally looking up at Holmes.

He still knelt in front of me, his keen gaze watching me intently, and I forced an embarrassed smirk at his gaze.

“Watson?” he asked quietly, a multitude of questions in the single word.

I tried to respond, tried to tell him I was fine, but my voice had not yet returned. The attempt turned into a near-flinch as my mind conjured the image of finding the cursed reptile in my chair. He frowned at me, but I waved him off, surreptitiously scanning the sitting room to make sure there were no more.

“There was only the one, Watson. Slow your breathing.”

A nearly-hysterical laugh tried to bubble free, and I smothered it, returning my focus to my again accelerating breathing. I should have known better than to think I could do _anything_ surreptitiously.

A few more minutes passed as I tried to calm down, and my words finally returned as I slowed my breathing yet again. “The next time you tell me to leave my revolver behind, I’m not listening,” I muttered, still looking through the floor.

He laughed.

“’M serious, Holmes.” The sentence was muffled as I put my face in my hands again, this time trying to hide that my hands still shook. “This would have been a lot easier if I could have shot the blasted thing. You just _had_ to get a cottage with a snake problem, didn’t you?”

“They were not a problem until you moved in,” he told me.

I knew he had not meant it as such, but that they had followed me was the first thought that came to mind. I smothered a shiver, scowling at the floor.

“And there is no need to shoot it when I can take it back outside,” he continued when I made no answer, more concerned with keeping me talking than truly disagreeing with me. “Just do not block me from entering the room.”

“I warned you.”

“Yes, yes, I know,” he brushed it away. “Battle instincts. My point remains. I cannot remove the snake unless you let me reach the snake.”

“It would still be better to shoot it,” I muttered, letting him pull me to my feet as my heart rate returned to normal. Clenching my hands to hide how they still trembled and leaving the valise where it had fallen, I slowly made my way to my chair, suppressing a shiver as I carefully avoided where the snake had been. I could not hide that I checked my chair before I sat, but Holmes made no comment, only moving my valise to sit next to his and closing the door.

“Watson?”

I jumped, realizing I had been staring through the floor again. “Hmm?” I answered, avoiding his gaze.

“Unclench your hands before your fingers cramp again.”

I refocused on where my hands rested on the armrests to find myself with a white-knuckle grip on the seam. I grabbed a paperweight to move between hands instead.

Pouring us each a drink, he set mine on the table next to me before seating himself in his own chair, and a tense silence fell. I made no attempt to break it, my gaze on the paperweight as I tried to stop the fine tremors shaking my hands.

“Watson?” he finally said again. I glanced up. “Do we need to get a mongoose?”

A _mongoose_? The connection clicked a moment later, and a small grin broke free.

“No, Holmes,” I replied, using the paperweight to focus my thoughts. “We do not need to get a mongoose to attack any snake that makes its way into the cottage.” Another image of finding the snake in my chair—or worse, my bed—flashed through my mind, and I forcefully shoved it away as I continued, “I was serious about carrying my revolver around, though.”

He smirked, pleased to have broken me out of my tense ruminations. “Give me a chance to save it before you shoot it.”

I shrugged, still passing the paperweight back and forth. “You know better than to think I can promise that.”

His smirk widened, but he made no reply, merely turning the conversation to other things as he tried to distract me. He could not—not fully—but I did slowly relax as the evening stretched on. I never relaxed enough to sleep, however, and I tried to hide the book I took to the bedroom with me.

If the sound of his violin drifting through the walls was any indication, I did not succeed at hiding that either.

**Author's Note:**

> Feedback is always greatly appreciated :)


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